A Room Full of Bones (7 page)

‘Earliest indications suggest that death was the result of pulmonary haemorrhage,’ says Nelson cautiously. Is it his imagination or does Danforth Smith relax slightly?

‘How ghastly. Did he have weak lungs?’

‘We won’t know until we’ve looked at his medical records but it’s quite possible. But I wanted to talk to you about another matter.’

‘Yes?’ Smith leans forward across the acres of polished wood. His tone is one of polite interest but Nelson notices that one hand is clenched tightly around a fountain pen. As Nelson watches, Smith seems consciously to relax his grip, letting the pen roll across the desk.

‘Yes,’ says Nelson. ‘Were you aware of any letters sent to Neil Topham?’

‘Letters?’

‘Threatening letters.’

Nelson places a file on the desk. He takes out some loose papers and pushes them towards Danforth Smith, who puts on a pair of half-moon glasses and peers at the
hand-written pages. Nelson watches him intently. At first Smith seems to show only polite interest then something makes him look harder. It’s almost a classic double take. What has Lord Smith seen in the letters that surprises him so much? Nelson continues to watch as, once again, Smith seems deliberately to calm himself. When he speaks, his voice is completely steady.

‘Where did you get these?’

‘From Neil Topham’s desk. Have you seen them before?’

There are three letters in total. The first is dated August 2009:

The second letter is dated September 2009:

The third letter is dated October and reads simply:

Nelson looks at Smith, who has taken off his glasses and is rubbing his nose.

‘Lord Smith, have you any idea who sent these?’

Smith says nothing. Outside a horse neighs and a woman laughs. The silver cups glint in the autumn sun.

‘We have some heads,’ says Lord Smith at last. ‘At the museum.’

‘Heads?’

‘Aborigine skulls. They were originally acquired by my great-grandfather. We used to have them on display but now they’re kept locked up. About a year ago I got a letter from a group calling themselves the Elginists. They demanded the return of the skulls. Said they should go back to Australia and be buried in their ancestral ground … said they needed to enter Dreamtime, or some such rubbish. I gave them short shrift. Those heads belonged to my great-grandfather. They’re very rare. One’s been turned into a water carrier. I couldn’t just turn them over to some bunch of nutters. I mean, these artefacts are valuable, they need special care.’

‘Have you still got the letter?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll look.’ Smith gets up and starts to search in a steel filing cabinet. What is it filed under, wonders Nelson. N for Nutter? I for Ignore?

‘Here it is.’ Smith puts a single sheet of paper in front of Nelson.

This letter looks very different from the missives found in Neil Topham’s desk. It’s typewritten for one thing and is on actual headed notepaper, with a logo that seems to represent the moon above a meandering river.

There is no signature just ‘The Elginist Council.’

Nelson looks at Smith. ‘Did you reply?’

‘No.’ Smith looks haughty. ‘I wouldn’t dignify it with
a response. If you ignore these sorts of people, they go away. I’ve learnt that over the years.’

‘And did they go away?’

‘I assumed so. They didn’t approach me again.’

‘Did you know that Neil Topham had received these letters?’

‘No.’ Smith looks genuinely shocked but there’s something else there too, thinks Nelson. Anger? Fear? ‘I’m surprised Neil didn’t tell me,’ he says now. ‘We spoke every week. I felt that we had a good working relationship. I trusted him.’

‘When you last spoke to him Neil didn’t seem disturbed? Worried?’

‘No. We talked about Bishop Augustine. He was really excited about having the bishop’s relics at the museum.’

Nelson looks back at the letter. On the face of it, there’s nothing too alarming in it, except maybe the mention of ‘bad fortune’ to the Smith family. But Nelson’s eye is drawn to two things: the logo, which he now perceives to be a snake slithering under the moon, and the words,
the Great Snake will have its revenge
.

And he thinks of the room with the coffin and the open window and the single glass case containing the stuffed body of a snake.

Ruth drives to work on Monday feeling that several hurdles have been overcome. Kate’s birthday party (she knows she shouldn’t think of this as a hurdle, but still) went off OK and the new neighbour didn’t turn out to be a trendy sushi-lover or a weird seaweed collector. True, he had looked a little weird at first with his hair in a sort of sumo-wrestler knot and his feet, despite the weather, in leather flip-flops. And the name! She’d had to ask him to repeat it.

‘Bob Woonunga.’ He had grinned, showing very white teeth in a dark brown face.

‘Oh. That’s … unusual.’

‘It’s an Indigenous Australian name,’ he had explained. They were sitting in Ruth’s kitchen by this time, drinking tea. Kate was still asleep on the sofa.

‘Safe in dreamland,’ Bob had said. ‘Don’t wake her.’

Indigenous Australian? Did that mean Aborigine? Were you allowed to say Aborigine anymore? Ruth had settled for: ‘You’re a long way from home.’

‘I’m a bit of a wanderer,’ Bob smiled. He had an Aussie
accent which, Ruth realised, was one of the things that made her trust him. Why? Because of
Neighbours
and other warm-hearted Antipodean soap operas? Ruth doesn’t like to admit it but it’s probably true. As a student she had been addicted to
Neighbours
. And now she has a real-life Australian for a neighbour.

She had wanted to ask more about Mr Woonunga’s wanderings but he had volunteered little except that he had a temporary post at the University of East Anglia, teaching creative writing. Or, as he put it, ‘I’ve got a gig at the uni.’ He has rented the house next door for a year.

‘Are you a writer then?’ asked Ruth.

‘Poet mostly, but I’ve written a few novels.’

Ruth was impressed. Like many academics, her ultimate goal is to turn her thesis into a book but so far she hasn’t progressed far beyond the title, ‘Bones, Decomposition and Death in Prehistoric Britain’. To think that someone can be so blasé about their success that they can shrug it away like that. ‘I’ve written a few novels.’ And he must be a successful writer if he’s teaching on the UEA course, even if she hasn’t heard of him.

‘What made you choose this place?’ she had asked. ‘It’s quite a way from Norwich.’

‘A friend recommended it,’ said Bob, stroking Flint, who seemed to have become surgically attached to his new neighbour. ‘And I like the place. It has good magic.’

Good magic. Ruth, negotiating the turn into the University of North Norfolk (definitely the poor relation to the prestigious University of East Anglia), wonders why she hadn’t recoiled as she usually does at any mention
of religion or the supernatural. Was it partly because she agreed with Bob Woonunga? Cathbad would say that the Saltmarsh is sacred to the Gods. Erik used to call it a symbolic landscape. Nelson usually refers to it as a dump. For Ruth it is home, but she sometimes wonders why someone born and brought up in South London should be so drawn to such a desolate place. Does
she
feel that there is magic in the shifting sands and secret pools? No. But, although she has experienced both fear and danger on the Saltmarsh, she knows that she wouldn’t live anywhere else. It’s not entirely rational, she’s willing to admit that.

Ruth’s office is in the Natural Sciences Block which is separated from the main campus by a covered walkway. It’s fairly pleasant in summer, with views over the ornamental lake, but on this grey November morning everything looks forlorn and unloved. The paint is peeling in the lobby and someone has scrawled ‘Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here’ above the main doors. Ruth climbs the two flights of stairs to her office, noticing that the fluorescent lights are flickering again. She’ll have a headache by lunchtime. She opens her door with a key card and sits down at her desk.

Ruth’s office is tiny, only just big enough for a desk and a chair. One wall is full of books, the other has a window overlooking the grounds. It’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter but Ruth loves it. It’s a place where she can be Doctor Ruth Galloway, expert in forensic archaeology, not Kate’s mum, running late as usual, or Ms Galloway, single mother. ‘You’re very brave,’ someone said
recently, ‘to bring her up on your own.’ What choice did I have? Ruth wanted to say. Expose her on the hillside? Leave her to be adopted by a friendly wolf pack? But she did have a choice, she recognises, right at the beginning. A choice she supports. It was just that when it came to it she realised she wanted a baby very badly indeed. And, if she never sees him again, she will always be grateful to Nelson for this at least.

Nelson’s birthday present was a large stuffed monkey. Ruth had looked at it for a long time, trying to find some hidden meaning in the blond acrylic fur and beady eyes. Why a monkey? Why a present at all? Hadn’t Michelle forbidden all contact? And when did Nelson deliver it? When the children were singing ‘Happy Birthday Dear Katie’? When Cathbad was rampaging round the garden? She doesn’t like the idea that someone can just drive up to her house, leave an offering on her doorstep, and disappear. Though it has happened before.

Ruth sighs and starts opening her post. November is a busy time, there are assessments to be made, essays to mark. They are more than halfway through the autumn term. She needs to read through her lecture notes for the morning but first she needs a coffee. Maybe a doughnut too. The canteen does a tolerable espresso but the trick will be getting there without running into Phil. She’ll risk it. He’s probably still at home, sleeping off last week’s conference.

‘Ruth!’

‘Hi Phil.’

Caught just outside her office, coffee money in hand.

‘Going for a coffee?’

‘Er …’

‘Great idea. I’ll go with you. Though I’m off coffee at the moment. Keeping Shona company.’

When, last year, Phil had left his wife of fifteen years to move in with Shona, few had felt confident that the relationship would survive. Even Shona seemed shocked at the transformation of her married lover into full-on live-in partner. Ruth had thought that Shona might lose interest in Phil once she had prised him from his wife (it had happened before) but then Shona had become obsessed with having a baby. Maybe it was because Ruth had just had Kate; maybe Shona just felt that the biological clock, though on silent for many years, was not to be denied. But for whatever reason, she had wanted a baby and Phil had obliged. Now Shona’s pregnancy is all that he can talk about. He seems to feel that Ruth is interested in every twinge of heartburn, every swollen ankle. Was he like this when his first children were born? Ruth wonders. She didn’t know him then but she bets not. Phil is embracing older fatherhood as he does every new fad, with tail-wagging enthusiasm. It’s quite sweet, she supposes, though she draws the line at discussing piles.

Phil, though, has something else on his mind. He buys a Smoothie and a banana (‘Shona’s got a real craving for them’) and steers Ruth to a discreet table near the window.

‘Terrible thing at the museum on Saturday.’

‘Yes,’ says Ruth. She bets Phil was gutted to miss the excitement.

‘That poor curator. Do police know how he died?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ says Ruth. ‘They don’t confide in me.’

Phil looks at her curiously. Ruth knows that he has always been intrigued by her relationship with Nelson. She keeps her face blank and takes a sip of coffee. It is thick and bitter and perfect.

‘Anyway,’ says Phil, obviously deciding that there is nothing more to be gained in that direction. He pauses impressively. ‘I had a call last night from Lord Smith.’

‘Oh yes?’ The name means nothing to Ruth. She looks longingly at her doughnut, the grease just starting to ooze through the paper bag.

‘The owner of the Smith Museum.’

‘Oh. Danforth Smith. What did he want?’

‘It’s a delicate matter.’

Phil looks positively delighted. He loves any intrigue. Ruth raises her eyebrows. She is desperate for a bit of doughnut but doesn’t want to look greedy in front of Phil – especially as Shona, even pregnant, is thinner than she is.